Exclusive:SNP accused of 'pulling wool over public's eyes' in Spending Review row

Ian Murray said the Scottish Government was manipulating the figures and “miscalculating”. He said the UK government was giving Scotland an extra £9.1 billion over the next three years.

On Wednesday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said her spending review would deliver an average block grant for Scotland of £50.9bn.

But Shona Robison, the SNP Finance Secretary, said the spending review treated Scotland as an “afterthought”.

Speaking earlier this week, she said: “Had our resource funding for day-to-day priorities grown in line with the UK government’s overall spending, we would have £1.1bn more to spend on our priorities over the next three years. In effect, Scotland has been short-changed by more than a billion pounds.”

Mr Murray dismissed this argument. Speaking to The Scotsman from the Filmhouse in Edinburgh, which is reopening with help from a £1.5 million UK government grant, Mr Murray said: "I firstly say, with all due respect, that I might send her a calculator because that is not the case.

"What she's doing is she's packaging up reserved department spend on things like defence and DESNZ [the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero] and including that in her calculations.

"We're giving the Scottish Government £9.1bn more over this spending review, which is the biggest settlement in the history of the Scottish Parliament. And what she's doing is pulling the wool over the eyes of the public by miscalculating the spending review.

"If she wants to calculate defence and reserved department spending as well in terms of the Scottish Government settlement, the MoD [Ministry of Defence] will spend a disproportionate amount of their 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence in Scotland, and that's not counted. But she's counting that in her figures to manipulate them, but she's completely and utterly wrong."

Ms Robison said: “The UK spending review document sets out in black and white that our funding for day-to-day spending is set to grow by only 0.8 per cent over the next three years, compared with 1.2 per cent average growth for UK government departments. This will short-change us by £1.1bn.

“What’s more, we face an estimated £400 million shortfall from the UK government’s failure to fully fund their employer National Insurance increase and expect reductions in our funding of a further £400m by 2029/30 from their proposed welfare reforms.”